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Sarah Valentine Chace, 20, is the first woman president of The Harvard Advocate, an undergraduate literary magazine which in its 112-year history has published such promising Harvard students as T.S. Eliot, James Agee, e. e. cummings, Norman Mailer and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Chace’s election last December continued a family tradition. Her father, James Chace, the managing editor of Foreign Affairs, had been an Advocate editor when he was at Harvard (’53), and her mother is poet Jean Valentine, who had her verse published in the magazine when she was at Radcliffe (’56) and who later won the Yale Series of Younger Poets award. Sarah, who ran against two other candidates—another woman and a man—finds both males and females on her 60-member staff “very supportive. I don’t want to say I’m not a feminist,” she explains, “but I’m not a separatist.” An English major with a B-plus average, Chace hopes to put out her first issue of the quarterly later this month. She promises “nothing revolutionary. But I’d like to change its image—so that students think it’s more accessible.” As for a career of her own in literature, she says, “Maybe someday I’d like to write. But talent is cheap. You have to work at it.” Right now she sees herself as just “a college kid—nothing special.”

David Hersh, 24, paid some $200,000 last October to become president, general manager and major stockholder of the Portland (Oreg.) Beavers, a Triple-A farm team for the Pittsburgh Pirates. With help from a lawyer, an accountant and his father, Hersh was able to convince 15 investors from Philadelphia to back him in buying the sagging minor league club. He never even approached a bank. After all, he reasoned, “What bank in its right mind would loan $200,000 to a guy my age, who only has two credit cards and no money?” Hersh’s experience with the minor leagues began right after graduation from Monmouth College in Illinois, when he was hired as general manager of the Burlington, Iowa Bees. With Hersh’s help, the club chalked up its highest attendance in 12 years and a league championship. A year later he did the same for the Appleton, Wis. Foxes. Then it occurred to him, “Why make money for other people when I can make it for myself?” With the Beavers Hersh now has his shot. He figures to lure fans with cash scrambles on the infield, top-name entertainers and reduced ticket prices. “You have to make people want to come out to the ball park,” he says, and predicts, “Portland will have a major league team by 1982.”